Aaaahhhh Vacation!

I've been meaning to write about our recent vacation but just haven't had the time.  As some of you might know, we have a place in Orlando and we made our yearly visit to it at the beginning of the month.  We left the day after Thanksgiving and spent the following week in sunny Florida.  My stepdad, Spiro, and my mother-in-law, Emma, came with us so Logan was a lucky kid to have 2 grandparents there to spoil him.  I was happy both of them came with us.  He made lots of memories with both of them that will stay with him forever. 

We had absolutely great weather this year.  High 70's, blue skies every day, and it wasn't even that humid, thankfully.  If Florida weather was always like that, I'd finally give in to Jim's request to move there.

So after a small delay in our flight to Tampa and picking up our rental car, we drove to Plant City which is half way between Tampa and Orlando.  This mural was on the wall of the cafe across the street from my Uncle Kenny's antique store.

Here is one side of the store front window of my Uncle's store.  What a lovely store he has.   I know nothing of antiques or the stores that sell them but his store was so pleasantly arranged.  I am so proud of my Uncle for opening the store he's always wanted to own.   He has so many lovely and unusual things in there so if you're into antiques or just like to browse those kinds of shops and you're ever in Plant City, Florida, be sure to visit his store.         

Here's a picture of Logan with my Uncle Kenny.

After checking out all the wonderful things he has for sale in his store, we drove back to Tampa but Logan stayed with Kenny who was going to close up the shop and meet us for lunch later.  So what to do while we waited for them to join us???  Why, visit Joann's, of course!  There's one ever so conveniently close to my Uncle's house and since we had time to kill, what better way to spend that time than perusing the aisles of a craft store, right?

Once inside Joann's, I came across this sight.  A lady was pushing the cart that contained her obviously pampered pouch named Lily.  I just had to take a picture of this and the owner graciously allowed me to photograph her "baby". 

After a little scrap shopping, we met up with everyone at a cool little taco shop named Tijuana Flats.  They have fabulous tacos and I think I might have done permanent damage to my taste buds by trying some of their hot sauces but lunch was delicious.  Here's a picture of Uncle Kenny and his son, Josh, and Logan at Tijuana Flats.

We enjoyed a fun night of catching up, game playing and great homemade lasagna at Kenny's house.  He was so kind to put all 5 of us for the night.  It was so wonderful to see my family.  I've missed them so much. 

The next day we said our goodbyes and drove to Orlando where we would spend the rest of the week.  On the way, we stopped at an attraction called Fantasy of Flight.  My thought in going there was to give Logan an opportunity to take a ride in a biplane.  However, once there and he learned he could go up in a different biplane that he could actually fly, he no longer wanted to just be a passenger in one.  Ok, so $250 later and a whole lot more grey hairs on my head, he got his chance to fly a replica of a 1942 Stearman biplane that was used to train pilots during WWII.  Here he is in the cockpit prior to taking off.

 There he goes as they are speeding up to take off.  The pilot is behind him. 

 And they're up!

Thank goodness the pilot told me she was going to blow smoke or I would have been a wreck thinking something was wrong with the plane.  They were gone for about a 1/2 hour and he had a great time.  The best part is that flight actually counts toward a pilot's license.

This picture is for my friend, Lisa.  We saw these round hay bales as we were leaving the airfield.  I made Jim stop the car so I could get out and take a picture just for her.  (Sorry folks, inside joke here.)

We made our way to Orlando where we dropped our luggage at our place and then went food shopping.  Here are Spiro and Jim goofing around in the Walmart parking lot. 

Here's one of my mother-in-law, Emma.  Her birthday was the day we were flying home we so we celebrated her birthday while we were down there. 

I've got more to share but right now there are presents to be wrapped and cards to be written out.  I'll be back with more pictures of our great vacation.

Thanks for stopping by!